


Desperate Times

by catsnkooks



Series: Desperate Measures (Jangobi Royal AU) [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda?, M/M, Mandalorian Civil War (Star Wars), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Young Jango Fett, Young Obi-Wan Kenobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsnkooks/pseuds/catsnkooks
Summary: During the civil war between the clans of Mandalore, Jango Fett finds himself in a predicament, with his only help coming in the form of a Jedi. No Mandalorian has trusted the Jedi since the ancient wars between the two, but Jango must make a decision. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Relationships: Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Desperate Measures (Jangobi Royal AU) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968982
Comments: 11
Kudos: 190





	Desperate Times

**Author's Note:**

> set before part one of the Desperate Measures series ft. ~20 jango and obi

Jango hissed, clutching at his side. That last Death Watch _shabuir_ shot him good in the side before Jango dispatched him with his own blaster. He collapsed against a tree, removing his now blood covered hand, grimacing at it. He was lucky he leapt out of the way in time, or the bullet would have gone right through his stomach.

He let out a small groan, tipping his head back against the tree, his helmet scraping on the rough bark, and closing his eyes. The injury wouldn’t debilitate him by any means, but he just had to get back to his father’s camp, somehow.

The bushes rustled beside him, and out stepped an older boy, probably around Jango’s own age, wearing a short beige tunic. _Jetii_. Jango raised his blaster, cocking it, and pointed it at the Jedi, and that was when he noticed him.

“Take another step, _jetii_ , and I shoot you,” he snarled. He remembered the tales his father and the other elders at Sundari told, of the ancient wars between Mandalorians and Jedi. The two factions had been mortal enemies ever since.

The Jedi took a step forward anyway, kneeling down beside him, his bright blue eyes filled with concern. “You're hurt. Please, let me help you.”

Jango pressed the tip of his blaster against the Jedi’s shoulder. “I don’t want your help. I can help myself.” A shooting pain went up his side, causing him to cry out and clutch at it again.

The Jedi snorted and flicked the auburn braid back over his shoulder. “Obviously.” He knelt down by Jango’s injured side, still holding his hands away from the saber clipped to his belt. _This_ jetii _has to be stupid…or crazy_ , Jango thought.

“I have a friend who can help not far from here,” the young Jedi continued. “I swear I will not harm you, Mandalorian.”

Jango surveyed his options. He could patch himself up with whatever crude knowledge he managed to remember from healing lessons and wait until a patrol found him. He knew they’d soon be on high alert looking for him. Or, he could let the Jedi take him to this friend to heal him…or kill him. He mulled his thoughts around in his head, then he decided, holstering his blaster and holding out his arm for the Jedi to take.

Slowly, they began to hobble through the forest. “I'm Obi-Wan by the way. Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Jango,” he said, trying not to notice the way Kenobi’s brilliant blue eyes twinkled with mirth as he turned his head to him.

“I’d shake your hand, but it seems we’re both a little busy at the moment.”

Jango groaned and rolled his eyes. _Great_ , he got a Jedi with a sense of humor. He wondered what the universe had out for him.

\---

They hobbled through the forest at an agonizing pace. Jango could tell he was slowly losing blood, and if they didn’t find this friend of Kenobi’s soon, he might pass out. Then, they came to a small cottage nestled between the trees and a creek. Two young women stood out front. One of them turned as they approached, crossing her arms.

“Drug in another stray, Obi?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “And you say Qui-Gon’s teachings don’t rub off on you.”

“He’s injured. I need your help.” Jango groaned as another searing pain went up his side, as if to convince her.

“Well, don’t just stand around here, get him in,” she said, ushering them inside.

Kenobi helped him wobble inside, leading him to a small room with an equally small cot. He eased him down onto the cot and then the woman was immediately upon him. She unclasped his armor and belt holding his blasters with an efficiency not seen in many non-Mandalorians, examining the wound on his side.

“Get shot by the Death Watch?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” Jango said, gritting his teeth to the pain as she poked at his wound. “Bastard surprised me.”

She just sighed. “You Mandalorians and your wars.” She turned to the other woman. “Get me my kit. It grazed him pretty good, but it’s small so it shouldn’t take much.” She nodded and left the room.

“What do you want me to do?” asked the Jedi.

She pointed to the chair at the opposite corner of the room. “Sit here and don’t move or touch _anything_ until I tell you.”

“But—!”

“Sit!”

Kenobi huffed and plopped down onto the chair, crossing his arms. Jango might have thought it was cute if it weren’t for the throbbing pain in his side.

The other woman returned and handed her friend a satchel filled with a knife and other such sharp objects, glass vials, and some dried herbs. She laid them all out on the small table next to the cot, cutting away his shirt and preparing a balm.

“I need you to stay awake and coherent, understand?” she said. “Do you know where you are?”

Jango nodded weakly, groaning as she applied a bit of the balm. “Somewhere in the outer territories.”

The other woman snorted from her spot in the doorway. Jango noticed she held his holster with one hand and twirled a blaster in her hand with a practiced competence in the other. “We do have a name for it, but close enough.” She tilted his holster at him. “These are nice, by the way.”

The woman closest to Jango rolled her eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Jango Fett.”

She squawked and nearly dropped the glass container. Even the other woman choked in surprise. They both turned to glare at Kenobi, who looked up innocently from his chair. “What?”

“You almost killed the _Manda’lore’s_ son?” she shouted.

“I didn’t kill him!” Kenobi retorted, indignant. “He did that to himself.”

“No, but you didn’t tell me that I'm just stitching up the son of the most important man in the kingdoms.” She gave him a final glare before turning back to her task. “Oh, one of these days I'm gonna kill you Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Jango huffed in amusement and laid his head back, letting the woman stitch the wound in his side. The woman grumbled more about the wayward Jedi sitting in the chair, tying up the last of his bandages with a final pat.

“There, good as new,” she said, wiping her hands on a cloth. “I guess we ought to introduce ourselves. I'm Katrin, this is Oche.” She waved a hand to the darker-skinned woman who still stood in the doorway, inspecting Jango’s blasters. “You already know Obi-Wan, unfortunately.”

“Hey!”

She ignored the irate shout, bending to take off Jango’s leg armor. “You’re not hurt bad, but you’ll need a few days’ rest. You can stay here till you’re feeling better.”

“How do you know how to take off all that armor?”

This time, she turned to face Kenobi. “How old are you, Obi?”

The Jedi huffed, his pale face turning a bright shade of red. “I'm eighteen, thank you!”

“Oh, we’re just teasing you,” Oche said, ruffling his hair. “C’mon, give the boy some privacy. Show me what you’ve learned with your saber.” The young Jedi followed her out of the room.

Katrin turned back to Jango. “Are you one’a them helmet nuts?” she asked, waving her hand in the direction of his head.

Jango shook his head. He’d almost forgotten he hadn’t taken off his helm yet.

She nodded. “Well, I’ll go and let you have a little privacy if you’d like to take it off. Dinner will be ready soon. Holler if you need anything.” Then she left the small room, closing the door behind her.

Jango sighed, letting out the tension he’d been holding all day. It’d be a long few days of rest for him.

\---

The next morning, Jango woke to a horrible beast in his face. Three piercing green eyes stared down at him and hot breath that smelled like fish filled his nose. He shouted, sitting up quickly and shoving the creature off of him. It hissed indignantly and stalked out of the room.

Jango sat up the rest of the way on the bed, swinging his legs over the side. He hissed as a stabbing pain lanced through his injured side. Standing gingerly and holding onto as many things as possible for support, he limped out of the room.

A large square table stood in the center of the room. Plates of fruits and breads and a few meats sat out on it, an empty plate sitting in front of an empty chair for Jango. Katrin looked up from her spot at the table, pausing her needlework.

“Ah, he shows himself,” she said, resuming her work. Oche looked up briefly from fiddling with his blasters, then resumed as well.

Jango bit back his retort, his stomach growling. He was _starving_ and everything on the table smelled so good. He took his seat, piling food onto his plate.

“There’s plenty if you want more,” Katrin encouraged. “I know how a growing boy like you eats.”

Jango took a bite out of his food and nearly moaned. There was nothing like fresh, homemade food anywhere in the kingdoms. It wasn’t _uj’alayi_ but it would be good enough until Jango returned home.

“Where’s Kenobi?” he asked between mouthfuls.

“In the garden,” Katrin said, not looking up from her work. “Why? You miss him?”

Jango scoffed. As if. “I just like to know where my enemies are.”

Both women rolled their eyes.

Now that Jango was more conscious and not blinded by pain, he could better observe his hosts. The first thing he noticed was Katrin’s ears. They extended from her head in the same position as a human’s but they were almost cat-like in shape and appearance, and they moved as a cat’s would. Then his gaze turned to Oche, where he noticed her dark skin didn’t look exactly right and almost looked like scales—.

“Didn’t Jaster teach you not to stare?” Katrin said, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Oh, don’t be too hard on him,” Oche said. “I’d stare at your ugly mug too if I just met ya.”

Katrin set down her needlework to glare at her friend. Jango opened his mouth to retort back when another voice interrupted him.

“Ah, you’re awake,” said Kenobi from behind him. Jango jumped in his chair. How had the Jedi snuck up on him like that? “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Jango grumbled, tearing into a piece of bread.

“I’ll need to check it once you’re done.” Katrin set down her work and sighed, folding her arms on the table. “Probably need to change the bandages.”

Kenobi’s eyes lit up as he saw Katrin put down her work. “Oh! You have your needle out?” Jango was struck by just how _blue_ his eyes were.

Katrin narrowed her eyes at Kenobi. “If you bring me another torn robe, Obi-Wan, I swear….” She let her threat hang in the air as Kenobi brought up his robe, smiling sheepishly. She sighed, sitting back in her chair, then threw her needle cushion at the Jedi.

Jango hid his grin behind his bread.

\---

Jango’s second day resting passed just as quickly as the first. He spent most of the day following around Oche as she worked with his blasters. _Making improvements_ , she had told him when they were in her forge.

“Those are family heirlooms,” Jango had grumbled. Found in the wreckage of Jango’s home, they had belonged to his birth father, his father before him, and so on, now Jango’s last remaining link to his former family.

“You gotta let go of some things eventually, kid,” she had said, handing them back. Her skin glowed in the light of the forge, as if drawing directly from the heat of the fire around them. “Nothing lasts forever.”

Now it was the third day. Jango was laying on the cot in the spare room, stroking the creature, named Róisín, behind her ears. She purred, her small body rumbling where she sat on Jango’s chest, and kneaded with her front paws. She had taken a liking to him and deemed him good enough to lay on. Katrin and Kenobi sat on the floor in the main room, her mending his robe, while Oche sat at the table, carving a piece of wood.

“How goes it with Qui-Gon?” Katrin asked.

Kenobi shrugged. “It’s alright.”

Katrin raised an eyebrow but didn’t look up from her task. “Oh?”

Kenobi opened his mouth as if to say something, then just sighed. “I don’t know. I guess…I don’t think he trusts me anymore. Not after…you know.”

Jango didn’t know, but now he wanted to. He thought the relationship between _jetii_ masters and their apprentices were tight, almost parental, like the relationship between himself and Jaster. Maybe not so.

“Sometimes I think he resents me,” Kenobi continued. “That he’s stuck with me. I'm a horrible padawan after all.” His voice dripped with bitterness.

“Obi-Wan,” Katrin chided softly. “You are not a horrible padawan.”

Jango watched as Kenobi’s lips twisted. “Well, he’s only lost me, what, _three_ times?” He sighed again, staring down at the floor between his propped legs. “Sometimes I think he should have left me there one of those times. I almost believed it, too, when I was there, on Bandomeer, on Melida/Daan. Sometimes I think I should have never come back to the Order.”

Katrin set down her work, scooting to sit in front of the young Jedi, and tilted his head up to look her in the eyes. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, you listen to me. You are _not_ a failed Jedi. You are a bright, young student who has the whole world ahead of him. You have an amazing, if a little wayward, master who loves you very much. Now I don’t want to hear any more slander, do you hear?”

Kenobi gave her a watery smile. “Yeah. Thank you.”

Jango couldn’t see, but she must have smiled at him as she took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead. Oche walked over to him, abandoning her carving, and ruffled his hair.

“You listen to her, kid,” she said, her voice gruff but her tone soft. “Now, c’mon. I wanna teach you some tricks on that saber of yours.”

Kenobi jumped up with a grin, grabbing his saber that he left on the table. “You know one of these days you’re gonna have to stop calling me kid. I'm already taller than you.”

Jango didn’t catch her response as they walked away, instead watching Katrin as she picked up Kenobi’s robe, sighing and shaking her head. Jango leaned back on the bed, petting the creature behind her ears, thoughts running rapidly through his head.

Maybe he would have to rethink his stance on the Jedi.

\---

On Jango’s fourth morning there, he decided it was time to leave. He no longer winced with pain as he stood and the gash had quietened down to a paler pink than an angry red. The healers at Sundari could take care of the rest.

Jango stuffed his torn tunic into a bag Katrin had given to him earlier, pilfering some bread and dried meat from her cabinets. He would repay her later; he would make sure of it. He spotted someone walking toward him in the early morning light and he turned, one hand straying to his blasters that lay in the table.

“Leaving so soon?” came the crisp accented voice of the young Jedi. Kenobi stepped out of the shadows, hands clasped in front of him.

Jango just grunted, continuing to buckle on his armor.

Kenobi hummed, peeking around him. “You know it’s not nice to steal.”

“I’ll repay her,” Jango said, feeling like a scolded child.

Kenobi smiled at him. “I know you will. I’ve heard much about you. You’re an honorable man, Jango Fett.”

Jango flushed, with both embarrassment and pride at the Jedi’s praise. “Thank you,” he said. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Kenobi shrugged. “I have a feeling we will meet in the future. The Force smiles upon you.”

Jango almost rolled his eyes at the Jedi gibberish Kenobi spouted off. Instead, he slung his belt over his waist, holstering his blasters. He was ready. He shared one last nod with the young man, and then quietly left the cottage.

\---

Obi-Wan sat at the table after Jango left, ruminating over the past three days. Katrin and Oche finally emerged from their bedroom, Katrin rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She peeked into the spare bedroom, sighing when she saw no evidence of the young Mandalorian.

“He leave already?” she asked Obi-Wan, pulling her legs underneath her as she sat beside him.

He nodded. “Yes, early this morning.”

She sighed again, her ears flattening back in annoyance. “Damn stubborn Mandalorians.”

“He stole some food from us, too,” Oche remarked from the kitchen.

Obi-Wan chuckled as Katrin continued to grumble about ungrateful Mandalorians, staring out of the window where he knew Jango left. From the moment he had met the young Mandalorian, the Force hummed around him in a way he had never felt before. He was certain of the words he had told Jango. They would meet again, as the Force willed it.

\---

Jango didn’t have to walk far until he found a patrol. He knew Jaster would send everyone out looking for him. Unfortunately, this one was led by Myles. Jango stopped as he watched his friend run over to him, already knowing what was coming.

“Myles, don’t you dare—!”

Too late. Myles barreled into him, almost knocking him over, and wrapped his arms around Jango, lifting him up and spinning him around. He knocked their helmets together when he finally set Jango down.

“How many times have I told you not to pick me up, _di’kut_?” Jango punched the taller boy in the arm affectionately.

Jango knew Myles was grinning under his helmet. “I thought you were dead, _di’kut_! I think I get a pass this time.” He slung an arm around Jango’s shoulder, leading him to the rest of the patrol. “You gotta tell me all about happened.” He poked Jango in the ribs and he stopped himself from wincing.

Jango thought about the young, reluctant Jedi sitting on the floor and the words that swam in his head since he had left. “Well, be prepared for a boring tale.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this, consider leaving a kudos or a comment!! if you liked it, hmu on my tumblr 2/catsnkooks


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